A Storage Area Network (SAN) is a network of storage disks and may also include switches, servers, and disk subsystems. A benefit of SANs is storage consolidation, which enables the sharing of a single or multiple large disk subsystems across a large number of servers and/or applications. Another benefit of SANs is that a plurality of SANs may be interconnected with bridges, such as a WDM device, and located at different geographic locations to form Wide SANs. For example, a SAN in San Francisco may be communicatively coupled to a SAN in San Diego.
SANs and Wide SANs are managed using SAN management software. An important feature of conventional SAN management software is automatic discovery of all SAN devices, such as servers, switches, and disk subsystems, in a SAN. SAN management software also stores a topology of the discovered SAN devices. Therefore, a new system and method for managing SANs is needed.